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<h4 class="subsection">3.10.4 Orphan Sections</h4>
<a name="index-orphan"></a>
<p>Orphan sections are sections present in the input files which
are not explicitly placed into the output file by the linker
script.  The linker will still copy these sections into the
output file, but it has to guess as to where they should be
placed.  The linker uses a simple heuristic to do this.  It
attempts to place orphan sections after non-orphan sections of the
same attribute, such as code vs data, loadable vs non-loadable, etc.
If there is not enough room to do this then it places
at the end of the file.
</p>
<p>For ELF targets, the attribute of the section includes section type as
well as section flag.
</p>
<p>The command line options &lsquo;<samp>--orphan-handling</samp>&rsquo; and &lsquo;<samp>--unique</samp>&rsquo;
(see <a href="Options.html#Options">Command Line Options</a>) can be used to control which
output sections an orphan is placed in.
</p>
<p>If an orphaned section&rsquo;s name is representable as a C identifier then
the linker will automatically see <a href="PROVIDE.html#PROVIDE">PROVIDE</a> two symbols:
__start_SECNAME and __stop_SECNAME, where SECNAME is the name of the
section.  These indicate the start address and end address of the
orphaned section respectively.  Note: most section names are not
representable as C identifiers because they contain a &lsquo;<samp>.</samp>&rsquo;
character.
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